Loch Garman: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 7)

by James L. Nelson

  The column of men trudged across the grassy field, still wet with the last of the morning dew, and soon after met up with the road Bécc had mentioned, a road he knew well. It snaked over and around hills for about ten miles before it branched off east and north. The eastern road led toward Rath Knock, the home of Airtre mac Domhnall. It was along that road that Airtre’s men would be advancing.

  The other branch ran off to the north, up into the hills, crossing the Bann several times along the way. That was the road that Bécc was to prevent the Northmen, or anyone, from traveling. Only men from Ferns, and only trusted men, were sent that way.

  The sun rose higher as they moved at an easy pace along the road, still soft from the rain but not muddy after several days of blessed dry weather. It also meant there would be no dust, but in truth, dust was rarely a problem in Ireland.

  They fell into a steady rhythm as they marched generally east, and Bécc, lost in his thoughts, thinking about how the day would play out and what he would do to make it so, trying to anticipate the thousand things that could go wrong, was all but oblivious to the countryside and the time passing by.

  “Brother Bécc?”

  Bécc looked up. It was Trian, the man he had designated as his captain for this adventure, a good and loyal soldier with whom he had fought in the older days.

  “Yes?”

  “I think we’re nearly there,” Trian said.

  Bécc looked up and was startled to see the bend in the road, the stand of trees to the north, a half mile away, the edge of the gully all but invisible behind the trees. He had been so lost in his thoughts he did not even realize they had come so far.

  “Very well,” he said. “Let us pause here, give the men a rest. I’ll go speak with the heathens.”

  He turned his horse and rode back down the line of men who were grateful for the chance to sit for a moment and drink water from their skins. It was proving to be a warm day, and they had already walked a considerable distance, but Bécc expected that each one of them would fight like demons or he would know why.

  He passed the last of his men and came up with the heathens, who were also sprawling by the side of the road. Thorgrim was still on his feet, however, and Bécc reined his horse to a stop and slid out of the saddle, his muscles making their displeasure known.

  Thorgrim stepped up to him, Failend at his side.

  “You see those trees, yonder?” Bécc said, pointing, and Failend translated.

  Thorgrim nodded.

  “They mark the edge of a gully, about fifteen feet deep and not too wide, but it makes a cut through the hills about a half mile long. There are more trees on the other side. It’s quite hidden, I doubt you can see it.”

  He waited while Failend translated and Thorgrim nodded again before continuing. “Here is my plan. You and your men conceal yourselves in the gully. My men will remain on the road. Airtre’s men are sure to come down this way; it’s their only approach to Ferns. When they do, we will meet them head-on. Once we are engaged with them, your men will come up from the gully and attack. You’ll be right on their flank and they’ll never see it coming.”

  Once again Failend translated. Thorgrim looked at the gully, then down the road, then over at Bécc. Finally he spoke.

  “Thorgrim asks how you knew that gully was there,” Failend said.

  Bécc frowned. That was not the question he would have expected. “Tell him I have traveled this road many times. I know all the country around here.”

  When Failend was done translating and Thorgrim had replied she said, “Thorgrim asks, won’t Airtre’s men know it’s here as well? Won’t they be expecting this?”

  “Airtre lives a far ways from here. I doubt that he knows the country that well. Certainly Tipraite, who leads those men now, does not. I don’t doubt that the surprise will be complete.”

  Thorgrim nodded. He spoke. “Thorgrim says he is sure you’re right,” Failend said.

  They did not rest long. Soon two horsemen came riding up the road, scouts whom Bécc had sent ahead earlier. They reined to a halt.

  “Brother Bécc, Airtre’s men, they are about two miles away and marching quick,” one of the scouts reported, the words coming out in gasps as the man tried to regain his breath.

  Bécc nodded, thanked the man. He called the others to their feet again and rode back to speak with Thorgrim. He remained on his horse this time as he spoke with Thorgrim and Failend, who stood beside his mount.

  “My scouts have just returned, as you no doubt saw,” Bécc said. “They tell me Airtre’s men are two miles away. It won’t be long now before they’re here, so I think it best if you and your men conceal yourselves now.”

  Failend translated. Thorgrim nodded.

  “It will be clear when the fighting’s started,” Bécc said. “I have no doubt you’ve seen and heard battles enough. When you hear we’re engaged, that’s when you lead your men into the fight. Keep well-hidden until then.”

  Once more Failend translated and Thorgrim nodded his understanding. Bécc reined his horse over and rode back slowly to the head of his men. “Trian!” he called, and when Trian stepped over to his horse Bécc said, “Airtre’s men are less than two miles off. The heathens will be going into hiding. You arrange our men across the road and get them ready to meet Tipraite when they approach. You know what to do.”

  “Yes, Brother,” Trian said, then turned and began to shout the orders that would get Bécc’s soldiers arrayed like a wall across the road, ready to meet Airtre’s men as they came on.

  Bécc turned his horse in a half circle so he could look back up the road. Thorgrim and one of his men, the wickedly large one, were getting the heathens on their feet and getting them in some sort of order. A moment later they headed off toward the trees and the gully beyond, a long and ragged line of men.

  Heathens…Bécc thought. The scourge of man, the terror from the North… They did not really look so terrifying at that moment, ambling over the field, doing Bécc’s bidding.

  Bécc had long thought that the fear that people had of these men was all out of proportion with the actual menace. That was why Faílbe mac Dúnlaing had scurried back to protect his home and left Ferns vulnerable to an opportunist like Airtre. But Bécc understood that once he had destroyed the heathens, then Faílbe and the other rí túaithe would dare come out of hiding. Then, together, they would crush the handful of Airtre’s men who lived through that day’s fighting.

  He watched as first Thorgrim and Failend, and then Louis and then the rest of the Northmen reached the tree line and disappeared behind the foliage and presumably down into the gully beyond. It was an ideal concealment, as Bécc had known it would be. No one could see them there. And they in turn could not see the road.

  Trian finished his yelling. The jostling of men and horses died away as the Irish men-at-arms settled into place, and once again it was quiet.

  Now…Bécc thought. He slid down off his horse and glanced back at the tree line. He knew of only two among the heathens who could speak the Irish language, Failend and Louis, and they were too far away now to hear him, even speaking normally. He stepped over to his men, lined up perpendicular to the road.

  “Listen to me,” he said, speaking just loud enough to be heard by all. “Here is the simple truth. Airtre’s men are not our enemies. They are Irishmen and Christians. If Airtre has made some stupid mistakes, that is not on their heads, and Airtre will be punished.

  “The heathens, however, are our enemies. They are the enemies of all humanity. They are the ones we wish to kill today. Airtre’s men will not be coming down the road. They will be coming from the north and they’ll attack the heathens in the gully and catch them unawares. When they do, we’ll attack from the front. Is that clear? When I lead you into that gully, it is the heathens you are to kill, and them alone. Understand?”

  He paused and looked up and down the line. Heads were nodding. If anyone was surprised by this change of plan, they were not showing it.

>   “Good,” Bécc said. “We have no need of prisoners. When you are exterminating vermin, there is no call to suffer any of them to live.”

  And then the waiting began, the bane of every fighting man. The quiet settled down over the countryside again, broken only by the occasional birdcall, a cough from one of the men-at-arms, a loud yawn. Bécc’s horse moved under him and gave a soft whinny.

  And then he saw them. The first of Airtre’s men. Not coming up the road but rather to the north, coming over a far hill, sweeping forward in a line. All of this had been arranged over the past day or so, so many changes of plans, instructions going back and forth, word passed from him to Airtre to Tipraite and back. Bécc had never really believed it would work out as they had hoped. Plans this complicated rarely did, with so many places where they could fail.

  But here it was. Airtre’s men, right where they were supposed to be, just when they were supposed to be there. Bécc watched as the dozen men in sight became twenty, then thirty, and finally a hundred or so armed warriors coming up over the hill and covering the final hundred yards to the far end of the gully, moving as fast and quiet as they could.

  Thorgrim and his heathen band, if all was going perfectly, would be watching the road, or hunkered down in the ditch, unable to see much of anything, and they would not know that Airtre’s men were there until they came up behind them, shouting and wielding their weapons.

  “Stand ready!” Bécc called to his men. They, too, had seen Airtre’s men launching their attack. Bécc could feel the energy like St. Elmo’s fire running through them.

  The first of Airtre’s men, Tipraite and his fellow captains, reached the tree line at the far end side of the gully and were lost from Bécc’s sight. Bécc was desperate to dig his heels into his horse’s flanks and charge forward, but he made himself wait. If he let the heathens get thrown into disarray by Airtre’s men before hitting them on the other side then the attack would be more effective and fewer of his own men would be killed.

  It was then that the shouting started, the war cries of Airtre’s men-at-arms, calculated to send fear and confusion through the ranks of the heathens, to create just a moment of bewilderment during which they would be cut down before they even knew what was happening.

  “Forward! Forward!” Bécc shouted and put his heels to his horse’s flanks. The animal broke into a run and on either side of him Trian and the other mounted warriors also surged ahead. Behind them, the foot soldiers, most with spears leveled, stepped off and built speed as they raced for the trees and the edge of the gully.

  Bécc was there first. Twenty feet from the trees he reined his horse in and slid down from the saddle even before the horse had come to a stop. He was running as soon as his feet were on the ground and he drew his sword as he did. He could see the edge of the gully now, the thick bracken and trees that grew along the steep slope. He could see glimpses of men moving through the brush and the trunks of the trees and the saplings.

  He found the edge of the gully and stepped off, half running, half sliding down the slope, the branches whipping his face, his sword held straight up to keep it from fowling the vegetation. He could still hear men shouting, and there seemed to be a different note to the sound now, but he had no time to puzzle that out. He was plunging downhill into the fight.

  Then he reached the bottom of the cut, damp muddy earth and thick trees and brush. He saw a man come out of the undergrowth ahead of him and he brought his sword down, ready to fight, but then he saw it was an Irishman, not one of the heathens. He turned to his right. A ways beyond where he stood more men seemed to be struggling and he plunged off in their direction. Ten feet away from them and he realized that they, too, were Irishmen, part of Airtre’s army.

  On either side of him, the men he had led forward began to reach the bottom of the gully as well. He saw Trian racing off, sword in hand, whacking at the undergrowth, looking for an enemy to engage.

  He looked to his left, he looked ahead, he looked to his right. There were men everywhere, weapons raised, plunging through the brush, slashing at low-hanging branches. And they were all Irishmen. Bécc lowered his sword and took a deep breath. He listened. The shouting had all but died away. There was no ringing of weapons, no crash of steel on wooden shield, none of the frantic enraged cries of men locked in battle. Nothing.

  Bécc shook his head, felt his gut twist in anger and disgust. They had launched a perfect attack on the heathens, but the heathens were gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  So came I next when night it was,

  The warriors all were awake;

  With burning lights and waving brands

  I learned my luckless way.

  The Poetic Edda

  Harald waited, silent and patient, while Cathal and the other Irishmen recounted to one another, in over-loud voices, the fight that had just taken place. He recognized the impulse, the rush of excitement that came in the wake of battle. He had been susceptible himself to that, once. But now, at the venerable age of seventeen, he had seen enough fighting that he no longer reacted in that way.

  “Well, Cónán,” Cathal said at last, turning to Harald. “I reckon those heathens taught you well. We have you to thank that we were able to do for these miserable bastards, instead of them cutting our throats like they done to the others.”

  “God was with us, I’d say,” Harald said because that was the sort of thing he expected an Irishman would say.

  “God be praised,” Cathal said and he made the sign the Christ worshipers did, touching his forehead and belly and shoulders, and Harald did it as well, as best he could.

  “You said there was some other place that more of these whore’s sons might be hiding?” Harald said. “A mine nearby?”

  “Yes,” Cathal said, and suddenly his tone sounded quite different. He looked at the others, then back at Harald. “But I’m sure that’s all right.”

  “Don’t you want to check that the bandits didn’t find it?” Harald asked. “Didn’t do anything to harm it?”

  Cathal shrugged. “It’s a damned hole in the ground. What are they going to do?” he said, and that was met with grunts of agreement. “More important, we need to see to that wound you got there.” He nodded toward Harald’s midriff. His tunic was torn and blood was seeping into the cloth. “Is it deep, you reckon?”

  “No, not so bad,” Harald said. He pulled his tunic off and one of the Irishmen cut strips of cloth from one of the dead bandits’ clothes and they bound the wound with that. Harald pulled his tunic on again.

  “We got to see our fellows buried proper,” Cathal said next. He looked down at the bodies of the bandits, sprawled out on the beaten ground outside the buildings. “And we need to do something with them bastards, too,” he added.

  That led to a certain amount of muttering among the others, and averted eyes, and Harald had the impression that none of them wished to trouble with the dead bandits, though they clearly could not be left to rot where they were.

  “I suppose I can get rid of them,” Harald said. “If you don’t much care about them being buried in a proper way.”

  The others shook their heads. “Don’t really care what happens to this vermin,” Cathal said.

  Harald nodded. “Very well,” he said. He turned and walked back to where the horse, too weary to bolt even with the excitement it had just witnessed, stood slumping in the wagon’s traces. He took the reins and led the animal back. Cathal and the others were searching the bodies of the dead men for valuables. They had cut a few leather purses from belts, but Harald could not imagine there was much of value there.

  He brought the wagon to a halt and he and the others loaded the dead men into the back, stacking them like firewood. Then Harald climbed up onto the wagon and flicked the reins and the horse started to walk, so slow that it seemed like a form of protest.

  He drove the wagon around behind the buildings and off to the north, following a worn path. He could see the River Bann a couple hundred feet
away, and as he approached he could see a boat, one of those Irish skin boats, the ones that the Irish called curachs. Good boats, light and sturdy and quick.

  Before he reached the river he turned the wagon and continued on until he figured he was far enough from the two houses for his purposes. Then he stopped and with no ceremony pulled the bodies from the back of the wagon and deposited them on the ground.

  The Irish, apparently, had some aversion to treating the dead in this way, and to be sure, Harald would never have deposited the body of any man, even an enemy whom he respected, in such a manner. But for the kind of men that the bandits had been, he was perfectly happy to leave them for the crows and the vultures and the wolves. And he knew from experience that those creatures would make short work of the dead men’s remains.

  By the time he returned, the others had begun digging a proper grave for their fellows who had been killed by the bandits. Six of them, as it turned out. They had been taken by surprise, apparently. There was no indication that they had put up any sort of fight.

  Harald took up a shovel and helped with the digging and after some time they managed to get the grave dug, ten feet long and sufficiently deep, big enough to bury them all without having to stack one on another. The dead men were gathered up and laid in the roughly rectangular hole.

  “Will you just bury them like that?” Harald asked. “Don’t they have any weapons or such that should accompany them?”

  Cathal and the others looked up and their expressions told him he had said something wrong, but he was not sure what it was. “You been too long among the heathens,” Cathal said at last.

  Harald nodded and did not ask for an explanation. Cathal said some words that sounded like they might be from the book that the Christ worshipers had. Or books. Harald had often seen them, on the altars of the Christ churches, adorned with thick, embossed and bejeweled leather covers, illustrated in the most extraordinary manner. He had always wondered if they were all copies of the same book, or different books.